Will I Ever Be Good Enough?

by Karyl McBride

  The Sisters Extreme

  When two daughters are being raised by the same narcissistic mother, I found that, more times than not, they take on very different roles. Both girls internalize the same message that they are valued for what they do, rather than who they are, but they behave in opposite ways. One sister may internalize the message and say, “Okay, I will show you what I can do and how worthy I am” and become an overachiever and a perfectionist. The other sister may internalize this message of inferiority and give up, feeling that she can’t make the grade anyway; she becomes an underachiever or engages in some kind of lifelong self-sabotage. We will explore this phenomenon more in Part Two when we discuss life patterns of daughters of narcissistic mothers. The most important part of this to remember is that even though the external landscapes I describe seem like polar opposites, the internal landscapes are strikingly similar. In other words, the lifestyles of the women may appear quite different, as the high-achieving daughter will look more successful on the outside, but on the inside, both sisters hear the same negative, internalized messages and struggle emotionally. If there is only one girl in the family, she tends to take one of the polar extremes and become either high-achieving or self-sabotaging.

  What causes a daughter to take the high-achieving path versus the self-sabotaging path? I have wondered a lot about this. According to my clinical study, the high-achieving daughter usually had someone special in her life who gave her unconditional love and support, typically the father, an aunt, grandmother, or teacher. The self-sabotaging daughter either had no one to nurture her or had only limited access to an adult who served that role during her childhood.

  My sister and I took extreme polar opposite paths, perhaps because, when my sister was very young, we moved away from our grandmother, who was a loving presence for me in my early years, offering encouragement and nurturing. My sister missed this special loving connection with our grandmother and has struggled more in certain areas of her life than I. But we have both definitely fought with the internal critical messages instilled in us.

  Daughters of narcissistic mothers seem to relate to extremes in all aspects of their lives and seem overly tolerant of aberrant and unusual behavior, which of course their mothers often exhibited. I even thought at one point that the title of this book might be Women of Extremes. A quick overview of what we have learned so far exhibits the extremes that daughters of narcissistic mothers have learned to live with:

  • Narcissism itself causes a person to swing from grandiose feelings to deep depression, almost like bipolar disorder.

  • As a spectrum disorder, narcissism can range from a few traits to a full-blown narcissistic personality disorder.

  • Maternal narcissism takes the extreme of engulfing or ignoring.

  • Daughters of narcissistic mothers seem to favor opposite ends of a continuum of life patterns, either success-oriented and high-achieving or self-sabotaging.

  • Daughters’ relationships with men tend to be either codependent or dependent.

  The Shiny Red Apple with the Worm Inside

  Narcissistic families are disconnected emotionally. They may appear solid on the exterior, but authentic communication and connections between the members rarely take place because the parents in this family are focused on themselves. They expect the children to react to their needs, instead of the other way around, as in a healthy family. In this dysfunctional system, adults do not deal with real feelings, and therefore do not meet the emotional needs of the children.

  In a healthy family, the parents are emotionally connected, happy with each other, in control of the family, and at the top of a hierarchy.2 Their job is to take care of the children, who look up to them for support and protection. The parents shine love down on the children and strive to meet their needs physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. A diagram of the healthy family, adapted from a structural family therapy model, looks like this:

  In unhealthy families, this hierarchy becomes skewed, and the children end up taking care of the parents. In a family with a narcissistic mother, everybody attends to the mother, and other family members’ needs are not met. In the narcissistic family the mother is at the center of the system with the rest of the family revolving around her, like the planets revolving around the sun, as in this diagram, below:

  The diagram displays Mother’s self-absorption and Father’s pact to take care of her. The unspoken rule in these families is that they do not discuss this dynamic and it becomes a family secret. In order to maintain the peace, the children have to keep quiet and not rock the boat. They fear abandonment, which causes them to mask their real feelings and pretend that everything is okay—a survival mechanism. In doing so, they do not learn to express or even be in touch with their feelings, and they are thus set up for many interpersonal difficulties later on in life.

  When children can’t rely on their parents to meet their needs, they cannot develop a sense of safety, trust, or confidence. Trust is a colossal development issue. Without the learning of trust in our early years, we are set up to have a major handicap with believing in ourselves and feeling safe in intimate connections. Daughters who grew up in narcissistic families uniformly report a lack of confidence in their own decision making as well as difficulty with assuredness in their love relationships. In the recovery section of this book, we will examine what can be done about this void in development. It is important to understand, however, that resolving trust complications will be a lifelong recovery task.

  Oftentimes when Mother is narcissistic, she may be able to do some of the earlier nurturing because she has control of the infant and small child and can mold the child to her wishes. But as the child grows older and develops a mind of her own, the mother loses control and no longer has the same kind of power. This causes the mother to begin her demeaning, critical behavior with the child, in hopes of regaining that control, which is crazy-making for the daughter. Even if she learned a modicum of trust as an infant, she begins to unlearn it as she grows older. As she makes natural, reasonable demands on her mother, who is unable to meet them, the mother becomes resentful and threatened, and projects her inadequacies onto the daughter. She begins to focus on the daughter’s failings, rather than on her own limited ability to parent effectively.

  You may remember that the characteristics of the narcissistic mother in chapter 1 included a sense of entitlement. This means the narcissist thinks she deserves the best, the most important treatment, being the first in line, being treated with extraordinary efforts, and so on. It also means that her daughter will not be able to have a sense of entitlement, because there is never room for both. Adult feelings of entitlement are unhealthy and dysfunctional, yet as small, helpless, dependent children we are entitled to be cared for. Every child deserves to have someone in her life who is irrationally crazy about her! We gradually grow out of this entitlement and dependency and learn to take care of and rely on ourselves emotionally, which is a sign of stable mental health.

  In order to take good care of ourselves as we move through life, girls need to develop sound boundaries between themselves and others. They also need to be able to state what they need in relationships. The daughter of a narcissistic mother does not get to do this, particularly if those needs interfere with what Mother wants. This then causes the daughter to repress her feelings and needs, deny herself, and learn to be fake. Without healthy boundaries, all relationships become skewed in some way.

  Setting healthy boundaries requires direct statements and clear communication. Narcissistic families commonly have a skewed, ineffective communication style called “triangulation.” Instead of the mother talking to the daughter, the mother may express her thoughts and feelings—usually negative and criticizing—to another family member in the hope that he or she will tell the daughter. Then the mother can deny that she said it, although the message somehow got out there anyway. This triangulation in communication is passive-aggressive and is an expression of the se
ntiment “I will get you back, but not directly to your face.” Many families, unfortunately, communicate in this dysfunctional manner, but narcissistic families are the poster example.

  In recovery you will learn to say it like it is. No more pretense, no more facade, no more inauthentic representations of ourselves.

  Like a shiny red apple with a worm inside, the narcissistic family hides profound pain. To understand how these relationship dynamics set up the daughter to unconsciously create unhealthy life patterns, we have to discuss further the concern that the narcissistic family has about its image. “It’s all about Mom” and “It’s all about image” are its mottoes.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  * * *

  IMAGE IS EVERYTHING:

  PUT A SMILE ON THAT PRETTY LITTLE FACE

  Image! Image was all that mattered to Mom. She was obsessed with appearance right up until she died at age fifty-four from complications during a liposuction.

  —Joanie, 45

  Put a smile on that pretty little face. Throw back your shoulders, hold up your head, and don’t let the world know that you are unhappy.” As a child, I was told this repeatedly. I cannot count the times I felt like frowning or crying and my mother would cite those lines to me. It hurts to smile if the feeling underneath is sadness, anger, confusion, or some other kind of pain. Sometimes it just feels good to frown, be sad, be angry—in other words, be real.

  How It Looks Is More Important Than How It Feels

  Daughters of narcissistic mothers are told plainly in words or by their mothers’ example: “How you look is more important than who you are or how you feel.” The “image message” has little to do with healthy selfhood; it springs from the internal insecurity and fragile ego of the narcissistic mother. Narcissists typically put on a great show so that others think they are special or unique, and they even convince themselves of this. But at their core is a disoriented, ill-developed sense of self that is very small, incomplete, and defective.

  Our culture’s materialism, advanced technology, and material wealth reinforce the importance of image and presentation for everyone. But women are subjected to it more constantly and are more vulnerable to persistent cultural ideals of thinness, fitness, and perfection. Daughters of narcissistic mothers are not only pressured by the culture, they’re also pressured by their mothers’ ceaseless messages about maintaining a perfect image. For us, it is a double whammy! These combined forces present a tremendous challenge for the girl or woman trying to be her own person. Below we will discuss the image messages we got from Mother and then see how our narcissistic culture frosts the cake with lavish reinforcement.

  Projecting the “Right” Image: Maternal Reflections

  In Postcards from the Edge, the movie based on Carrie Fisher’s semi-autobiographical novel, the mother (Shirley MacLaine) is ill and in the hospital. All she worries about is her hair and makeup, and she tells her daughter that she does not want to be buried without her eyebrows. Her daughter (Meryl Streep) explains the family to a doctor this way: “We’re designed more for public than for private.”1 The women I’ve treated and interviewed agree.

  Image is what Mother wants the world to see about her, and she expects her daughter to polish that image further, and carry it for the family into the world. But most daughters are overpowered by this expectation. They can’t carry their mothers’ image and they have trouble establishing their own.

  • Tonya, 28, confides, “Mom so wanted me to be the ‘image girl.’ She wanted the most popular girl in school, dating the football player, majorette and prom queen type. I was not that kind of teenager and it was a big disappointment to her. I had anxiety disorders and low self-esteem.”

  Daughters internalize maternal messages about image that can persist well into their lives as independent adults. Bella said, “I learned that it is about how it looks, not how it feels. I picked this up in my personal appearance and my home. I wish I didn’t do this, but it doesn’t matter who is coming over to my house, I want it to look pretty. Our house with Mom was always pretty and clean. I don’t walk around without makeup on, except when alone with my husband. I like to take care of myself, and I am very competitive with other women if we go out. I feel pressure from society to be thin, pretty, and look nice.”

  • “This image thing was a strong message,” says Jessica, 43. “To this day, I keep things looking good and hunky-dory at my house. No one in our family knows that my husband and I have any problems. It made me concerned about how I look too. Now I want to have a boob job and I am jealous of other women.”

  • “When my mother died, she was in a coma for a time,” recalls Magda, 55. “The nurses had pulled her hair back in a braid, and it looked awful. When she died and I went over to the mortuary and saw her body, she still had this stupid braid. My dad had dressed her appropriately, but that braid! All I could think of was she wouldn’t be caught dead with her hair like that!”

  • Living up to Mother’s expectations sometimes requires surrendering personal choice. Charlie told me, “My mother put special efforts into how my sister and I looked. We were always perfectly matched with bows, colors, shoes, and outfits. I don’t remember choosing something that I wore until I was at least 14.”

  Mother sometimes completely disregards a girl’s wishes, and the daughter may end up feeling that she is an object, not a person. My own mother used to braid my hair so tightly my eyes would slant and I would cry and say it hurt. Her message back was, “It hurts to be beautiful!” I still don’t know what that really means. Does it mean that if I don’t look a certain way, I won’t be successful, accepted, or loved? And that to look the accepted way, it has to hurt? What a disturbing worldview that was! The endless focus on beauty can become exhausting.

  • Trisha, 34, says, “There was always the ‘looks’ issue. My mother would always pull my bangs off my face and say, ‘Look at her face.’ I got kicked out of the house when I was 13 because my bangs were too long. Mother just walked up to me one day and cut them off.”

  • Sonja’s mother used to recite, “We must, we must, we must improve our bust,” and tell her, “Good God, girl, do those exercises. Don’t you know that no man will even notice you if you don’t develop bosoms?”

  An obsession with “how things look” can cause the narcissistic mother (or grandmother) to neglect basic parenting responsibilities. Amanda tells about the time that her daughter got in serious trouble with the law and had to go to court. Local journalists took a strong interest in the case, and there were reporters everywhere. Amanda needed her mother’s support, but her mother was too concerned about image to show up: “She said she couldn’t go to court with me and her granddaughter because she couldn’t handle the media seeing her break down. Mom carried on about how my kids are always in trouble and how she didn’t raise her kids to be like this. As if it was about her! It’s always too much for her to handle!” Amanda got some spunk when she finally told her mother, “Ya know, Mom, I like my kids better than I like yours!”

  • Cassie got to the point in her young adulthood where she wouldn’t tell her mother anything because her mother used it as a tool either to prove how wonderful or how stupid Cassie was, depending on how it made her mother look. “She always wanted me to marry a doctor. She used my accomplishments like a badge. She would set me up with sleazy doctors to date and then scan me to see if I looked okay. Was I presentable? Did I embarrass her?”

  • Leslie, 58, remembers as a child worrying about her parents’ financial situation. “They must have talked about it in front of me. I decided I needed to help. Codependent-trained me. So I called my grandmother and asked her if she would please send some money to my poor parents to help them. Reasonable, huh? Well, grandmother dear had a bit of narcissism as well. The next time she saw me, she raked me over the coals. ‘Don’t ever call me and say anything personal again, especially about money and your parents! We have a party line out here in the country and the neighbors can hear!’ Well, let’s see, I th
ink I was about seven years old at the time. Tell you something? Yes, Granny, I won’t embarrass you again. Forget about what I was feeling as a little girl worrying about her parents. I wonder, did I think then, What about me? Probably not, I must have felt just like a bad kid who had done something wrong—again.”

  • If a daughter doesn’t fulfill her mother’s goals for her, sometimes the daughter is made to feel as if her true accomplishments don’t matter. Julie, 30, remembers, “Whenever I was getting ready to go to my middle school Open House Night with my parents, Mom tortured me about what I was going to wear and how I would wear my hair. She never said anything about my project being chosen as one of the best in the class. Never took the time to look through my folders in each of my classrooms. I never got the feeling that Mom valued the things I valued about myself.”

  • The relentless focus on image leaves no room for true feelings. Often, the daughter is forced to be insincere to fit the mother’s image. Maya, 22, told me, “After Mom and Dad split up, Mom always instructed me to appear happy whenever I was with Dad. ‘Don’t show him that we are suffering without him,’ she’d tell me. I was suffering, but I did not want to disobey her, so I felt as if I was literally pasting a fake smile on my face. And when Dad would ask how I was doing, I’d say, ‘Great. Everything’s going fine!’ Lying like that made me feel guilty, like I was betraying my father.”